Disappointment and distress.

I discovered a few days ago doing sky that the range of Phalanx II had been cut from the usual 25' (in windower distance) to 20', the same as any other buff/cure spell.



This is probably what SE intended, but I'd grown to like the extra range, it made Phalanx II special. :(

Now it's just a huge MP sink and another spell for tanks to nag you for.

Also essentially having the spell with a broken range since it's implementation (group 2 merits have been out how long now?) is pretty fail on SE's part.


I also tried a FL assault with a shout group. Arc and Soli were AWOL so it took forever to find the last few members. We probably would have won as well if they were on :\


The plan was to have NIN/dnc solo tank it (which worked out surprisingly well, just took a little time to build hate) and SMN to give Dream Shroud (Magic Defense bonus) and Earthen Ward (stoneskin) to help the NIN survive the AoE nukes.

Meanwhile, we had BLMs to nuke down the adds (which are little weapon thingys that the chair guy summons) which worked well for the first bit of the fight, until the BLMs started running out of MP and the weapons kept coming.

We struggled through, killing all the weapons and were just at the point of resting and recovering MP while the NIN continued tanking (chair guy was at 50% by this point) before we finished it off.

Unfortunately, the nin got hit with some TP move, followed by an -aga nuke, and went down. There was enough time to prevent this, where I could have got up from resting, dump cures on the NIN, and rest again but I didn't - I assumed the WHM standing up right next to me was going to do his job I'd been doing most of already throughout the fight. My mistake.

So after that, the shit hit the fan.



I was next on the hate list (by a large margin) so chair guy spent a good while chasing after me. There was a large rock near the entrance that was great for kiting around, although he could still cast on me. Bind and Gravity both landed well on him, which usually got me enough time to recast stoneskin and blink. Refresh was difficult to keep up on everyone else though, and I stopped refreshing the BLMs at this point (especially because we discovered they do crappy damage on the boss - melee jobs instead of BLMs next time). The WHM still barely cured me. I was curious as to what he was doing with his MP.

SMN seems a pretty good job for this fight, was apparantly doing good damage with Predator Claws, and the Ward blood pacts are invaluable for supporting the tank.

Struggling for MP, and unable to convert with the boss chasing me (he was in his intimidation phase, so I couldn't get bind off either) I succumb to an -aga spell. The nin was unable to establish hate after unweakening, else we might have recovered.



It was a fun fight at least, and we came so close to winning with a bad set up (if we just had 1 DD or SMN instead of a BLM, we probably would have won it).